Women on Top in Tech – Sarah Kunst, CEO/Founder of Proday

(Women on Top in Tech is a series about Women Founders, CEOs, and Leaders in technology. It aims to amplify and bring to the fore diversity in leadership in technology.)

Here is my interview with investor and entrepreneur Sarah Kunst, CEO and founder of Proday, creator of a mobile app which lets you choose workouts from professional athletes and track your progress against them. Proday’s motto: “Workout alongside Professional Athletes. Anytime. Anywhere.”

What makes you do what you do?

I’ve always been a creator and a doer. My passion for technology started young and has only grown with time. I was lucky to grow up in a household with a computer and a local public library with generous free wifi allotments. As I got older, I became just as passionate about business and realized that building a company was the best way to combine my passions for creating and making money. Sports have always been a mainstay in my life and I’ve worked in media for years. All my interests collided about a year ago when I started Proday.co and I’ve never been more fulfilled or challenged.

How did you rise in the industry you are in?

Hard work and helping others. I spent years researching the tech industry, reading all the top VC blogs and tracking the rise of amazing founders. I then started on the ground floor, working in small startups for little pay while helping other startups for free or super low consulting fees on the side. I learned everything I could about as many areas as I could, from how to manage engineers and design wireframes to how to make money and hire people. I never said no to a learning opportunity even though most of them were disguised as hard work with little glory. Helping other people without expecting anything back and working harder than anyone around you is the way to make a name for yourself and build a reputation for integrity and value.

Do you have a mentor that you look up to in your industries or did you look for one or how did that work?

I’ve been mentored by many people over the years. Often it’s at a distance – people who I may only run into occasionally or who I don’t even know at all but I can study their work and learn from their tweets, interviews and LinkedIn profile. I think having a dedicated mentor who you meet with monthly is nice but often unrealistic. Don’t waste time looking for the perfect mentor, focus on what areas you want to improve in and go study people who are great at those things. If you struggle with operations, learn from people in the military or big companies like GE that are known for their prowess in that area. If you want to be more creative, study artists and designers. Most of us can learn a ton just by reading and observing so that when we do find a mentor in an area that we’d like to improve on, we’re ready for them to help us because we’ve already helped ourselves.

Now as a leader how do you spot, develop, keep, grow and support your talent?

Figure out what kind of leader and person you are, find the holes you need to hire for and then figure out how to find people to fill those holes. I’m a very hands off the manager and I hate repeating myself. I need to find people who are self-directed and listen when I do talk. For me, that means giving potential hires a lot of space and seeing what they can come up with and if they are self-motivated. I also know that I need people who will naturally be organized and proactive about communicating. I turn down a lot of amazing people because they aren’t the right person to work for me. Knowing yourself and what you need from hires makes hiring a lot happier and easier.

Do you consciously or unconsciously support diversity and why?

I very consciously support diversity because I’m greedy. I want to build the most successful company possible and I can’t do that if I focus on only hiring one gender or race. Anyone who’s serious about building a successful company knows they can’t do that without diversity.

What is your take on what it takes to be a great leader in your industry and as a general rule of thumb?

To be a great leader you have to be willing to learn a lot, listen a lot and then take action. Lots of leaders do one or two of those things but it has to be all three. Learn a lot on your own, listen to others who both agree and disagree with your findings and then choose a course of action and take it.

Lessons Learnt from The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup book authored by Eric Ries has been sitting on my shelf for quite sometime now, so since I am currently contributing to the making of a startup I figured I’ll take a look into it.

The book is divided into 3 parts, after reading the first two I had my mind blown with the pragmatic and scientific approach to building startups that is described in the book.

In this post, I would like to share some important insights that I gained regarding building highly innovative businesses.

Validating Value Proposition And Growth Strategy Is The Priority

Usually, a highly innovative startup company is working in its most early stage at building a product or a service that will create a new market.

Consumers or businesses have not been yet exposed to something similar to what is going to be built by the startup. Therefore the absolute priority for startups in early stage is to validated their value proposition i.e. to get real data about eventual customers interest regarding their product/service.

The other priority is to validate that the growth strategy that is going to be executed is, in fact, effective.

The growth strategy of a startup is its plan to acquire more and more customers in the long term and in a sustainable fashion.

Three kinds of growth strategies are described in the book:

paid growth in which you rely on the fact that the customers are going to be charged for the product or service, the cash earned from early users is reinvested in acquiring new users via advertising for example

viral growth in which you rely on the fact that customers are going to bring customers as a side effect of using the product/service

sticky growth in which you rely on the fact that the customers are going to use the service in some regular fashion, paying for the service each time (via subscription for example).

These growth strategies are sustainable in the sense that they do not require continuous large capital investments or publicity stunts.

It is important to know as soon as possible which strategy or combination of strategies is the most effective at driving growth.

Applying The Scientific Method

The scientific method is a set of techniques that helps us figure out correct stuff. After making some observations regarding a phenomenon, you formulate a hypothesis about that phenomenon.

The hypothesis is an assumption that needs to be proven correct or incorrect. You then design experimentations that are going to challenge the assumption.

The results of the experimentations makes the correctness or incorrectness of the hypothesisclear allowing us to make judgments about its validity.

In the lean startup methodology, your job as an entrepreneur is to formulate two hypothesis:

hypothesis of value (assumptions about your value proposition)

hypothesis of growth (assumptions about the effectiveness of the growth strategy)

These hypothesis are then validated/invalidated through experimentation. Following the precepts of lean manufacturing, the lean startup methodology prescribes to make experimentations while minimizing/eliminating waste.

In other words, you have to burn minimum cash, effort and time when running experiments.

An experimentation in the lean startup sense is usually an actual product/service and helps startups in early stage learn invaluable things about their eventual future market.

Sometimes startups learn that nobody wants their product/service, imagine spending 8 months worth of engineering, design and promotion work (not to mention cash) in a product/service only to discover that it does not provide value to anyone.

Minimum Viable Products And Feedback

As we pointed out earlier, an experimentation can be an actual product or service and is called the minimum viable product(MVP).

The MVP is built to contain just enough features to validate the value and growth hypotheses, effectively requiring minimum time, effort and cash.

By getting the MVP launched and in front of real users, entrepreneurs can get concrete feedback from them either directly by asking them (in focus groups for example) or via usage analytics.

Analytics scales better then directly talking to customers but the latter is nonetheless used to cross validate results from the former.

It is crucial to focus on metrics that creates fine grained visibility about the performance of the business when building(or using) a usage analytics system. These metrics are called actionable metrics because they can link causes and effects clearly allowing entrepreneurs to understand the consequences of ideally each action executed. Cohort analysis is an example of a analytics strategy that focuses on actionable metrics.

The bad kind of metrics are called vanity metrics, these tend to hide how the business is performing, gross numbers like total users count are an example of vanity metrics.

The author cites several examples of different startups that managed to validate or debunk their early assumption by building stripped down and non scalable MVPs and even sometimes by not building software at all.

You would be surprised to hear for example how the Dropbox folks in their early stage managed to created a ~4 minute video demonstrating their product while it was still in development. The video allowed them to get more people signed up in their beta waiting list and raise capital more easily.

Closing Thoughts

In the first two parts of the book, the author talks also about how employees inside big companies working on highly innovative products and services can benefit greatly from the lean startup approach, although very interesting this is not very useful for me right now.

The third part, talks about the challenges that arises when the startup gets big and starts to stabilize and how to address them. Basically it revolves around not loosing the innovative spirit of the early days, again, this is not very useful for me so maybe for good future reading.

Women on Top in Tech – Dr. Sanna Gaspard, Founder and CEO of Rubitection

(Women on Top in Tech is a series about Women Founders, CEOs, and Leaders in technology. It aims to amplify and bring to the fore diversity in leadership in technology.)

Dr. Sanna Gaspard is the Founder and CEO of Rubitection, a medical device start-up developing a diagnostic tool for early stage pressure detection, assessment, and management. She is an Entrepreneur, inventor, and biomedical engineer with a passion for innovation, entrepreneurship, healthcare and medical devices. She has received recognition and awards including being selected as a finalist for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards(’13), a semi-finalist for the Big C competition (’14), a finalist for the Mass Challenge Business accelerator in Boston, and taking 1st place at the 3 Rivers Investment Venture Fair’s Technology showcase (‘11). Her vision is to make the Rubitect Assessment System the global standard solution for early bedsore detection and management.

What makes you do what you do?
I am driven to have impact and improve healthcare as I have a strong drive to problem solve, comes up with new ideas, and see them come to life.

How did you rise in the industry you are in?
I first focused on getting the educational background and then I pursued the goals I have for myself. I got my PhD in Biomedical Engineering with a specialization in medical device development. Having the educational background is important as a woman and minority to assist people in taking your seriously. After completing my PhD, I focused on bringing my invention for a medical device for early bedsore detection and prevention called the Rubitect Assessment System to market to help save lives and improve care.

Why did you take on this role/start this startup especially since this is perhaps a stretch or challenge for you (or viewed as one since you are not the usual leadership demographics)?
I started my startup, Rubitection , because I felt it was the best way to bring the technology to market. I knew that if I did not try to commercialize the technology, it would not make it to the doctors and nurses. I also have confidence that I could manage developing the technology since I had taken classes on entrepreneurship and had my PhD in biomedical engineering with a specialization in medical devices.

Do you have a mentor that you look up to in your industries or did you look for one or how did that work? How did you make a match if you did, and how did you end up being mentored by him/her?
No, I don’t have a specific mentor in my field. I am looking for one at the moment. However, I do look up to Steve Jobs and Oprah as examples of how one can start with nothing and work their way up and build a successful, global, and reputable business and brand.

Now as a leader how do you spot, develop, keep, grow and support your talent?
I first try to find people who have fundamental technical or work experience to be competent to complete the work. I then evaluate the person for intangible skills like independent thinking, reliability, leadership, resilience, organizational skills, strong work ethic, open mindedness/flexibility, and good communication skills.

Do you consciously or unconsciously support diversity and why?
I consciously make an effort as a minority woman in tech, I intimately understand the need to promote diversity within my business and outside my business. I first hire the best people for the job and also make a point to hire women and minorities qualified for the position.

What is your take on what it takes to be a great leader in your industry and as a general rule of thumb?
It takes resilience, vision, being a team player, an ability to inspire others and delegate work, knowing your weakness, and knowing when to put your business or yourself first.

Advice for others?
My advice to others is to take calculated risks, pursue every opportunity, surround yourself with supporters, build your team with smart dedicated people, and stay focused on your vision. I am striving to implement this advice myself as I work towards commercializing my technology for early bedsore detection, grow my team, and recruit clinical partners to address an $11 billion US healthcare problem which affects millions around the world.

If anyone is interested in learning more about our work or company, please contact us at [email protected].